The New York Rangers needed less than six minutes on Saturday night to flash their peak potential.
The Rangers entered the third period of their road tilt at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens down a goal. Despite a rough start, they’d kept pace with the Canadiens and controlled play in the second period. More encouraging was that their lone tally had come from Mika Zibanejad on the power play.
J.T. Miller tipped in an Adam Fox point shot just as an early power play expired. A few minutes later, Matthew Robertson put the Rangers ahead with his first NHL goal — a one-timer from the point. Then, Artemi Panarin wired a shot off the post and in to put New York up by two.
“It’s massive,” said Alexis Lafrenière. “Especially recently, we played well, we felt like but couldn’t get the wins, and it’s big to get a big comeback win today.”
Here’s what we learned from the Rangers’ Saturday night comeback win in Montreal:
The Rangers are a resilient group
It would’ve been easy for the Rangers to get discouraged early. They entered Saturday coming off a frustrating 2-1 overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday, in which they outshot Toronto 29-24 and finished with more than half of the game’s expected goal share in a 2-1 overtime loss.
It would’ve been even easier for them to get discouraged after Montreal scored twice in the first four minutes of Saturday’s game to take an early 2-0 lead.
“We would have liked to have had a better start,” said Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan. “It was something we talked about before the game. My experience of coming here as a visitor, there’s a lot of energy in this building, and Montreal tends to have strong starts, and they feed off the energy.”
The Canadiens had nearly 67% of the shot attempts in the first period and just over half of the expected goal share, according to Natural Stat Trick. Over the final two periods, the Rangers tilted the ice in their favor in both metrics and had over 63% of the shot attempts in the final frame, in which they also had nearly 78% of the expected goal share.
A coach learns a lot about his team in performances like this, Sullivan said. He felt Saturday’s comeback was a “gutsy” effort.
“We’ve got a high character group in there,” Sullivan said. “There’s a certain resilience to them that I think is admirable and necessary to win in this league.”
Rangers’ star players deliver
Among the storylines dominating the early part of the Rangers’ season was the lack of production from the club’s star players. Entering Saturday, Panarin had no goals and two assists on the season; Zibanejad had one goal, and Miller had a goal and two assists.
Part of the star forwards’ lack of production, which has coincided with a historic goal drought at home, can be chalked up to the Rangers running into extremely hot goaltending. New York’s two most recent home losses came against Charlie Lindgren and Stuart Skinner, who rank 10th and 12th among NHL goalies this season in goals saved above expected, according to MoneyPuck.
On Saturday, Zibanejad zipped a one-timer past Canadiens goaltender Samuel Montembeault to cut the Montreal lead in half in the first period. Miller and Panarin both tallied in the third as New York rallied to take the lead.
“He’s playing the game the right way,” Sullivan said about Zibanejad. “He has the right intentions when he’s out there. He’s physical, he’s competing on pucks.”
Miller and Panarin tied for the Rangers team lead with four shot attempts each, according to Natural Stat Trick. All four of Miller’s attempts counted as shots on goal, and two of his were classified as high-danger chances, which was second on the team.
The question now is whether the Rangers’ stars can keep up this level of production moving forward.
Matthew Robertson scores first NHL goal
Matthew Robertson was caught on a bad pinch that led to the Canadiens’ first goal just over a minute and a half in, as he attempted to keep a puck in the zone off a Zibanejad high miss. But Cole Caufield caught him flat-footed and broke out with speed, finding Juraj Slafkovský on the two-on-one.
“That’s not an easy puck that he was handling that was coming around the wall,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got to do a better job supporting that so we don’t give up a two-on-one in that circumstance.”
Sullivan continued that sometimes, these plays can affect players. But he spoke highly of Robertson’s response — the defenseman competed hard, and the play didn’t affect his confidence or “swagger.”
Just over four minutes into the third period, Robertson’s long slap shot gave the Rangers the lead — and the defenseman his first NHL goal.
“I’m just trying to take it shift by shift,” Robertson said. “I’m not trying to look too far ahead and just try to enjoy every moment and get better.”
